The dueling histories in the debate over ‘historic Palestine’
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The New York Times recently came under fire when it accompanied an essay by Palestinian human-rights lawyer Diana Buttu with an illustration that showed a shrinking map of Palestine, from the borders of the British mandate for Palestine in 1947 to areas that would be under Palestinian control after adoption of a recent peace plan.
Patrick Healy, deputy opinion editor of the Times, issued a statement saying “it was not meant to be a literal, factual map … this was an illustration conveying a sense of shrinking space for Palestinians. It is art.”
Still, a version of this map has been circulating for almost 20 years, supposedly showing how “Historic Palestine” had been taken over by Israel. As a technical matter, the map is a confusing mélange of images: it includes something that did not exist (Palestinian control over all the territory), something that did not happen (the proposed United Nations partition) and something odd (pre-1967 occupations by Jordan and Egypt are depicted as Palestinian-controlled).
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